In Mango Honey - Sweet and Sour

This is one of the poems in the collection, In Mango Honey, subtitled "poetic stories of life.'

Intentionally approaching child-like simplicity, this poem reflects the essence of the book which is considerably deeper than it appears at first reading. It is intended to be playful.

Yet, it has its serious moments and themes, as In Mango Honey also tells a story ... of how my son Mathew came to be a part of this world.

 

Sweet and Sour

 

Mango honey mind is a state

but it is not a place.

It is like a place in that you can go there

and be in the state of mango honey mind.

I enjoy my visits to this non-place known

as mango honey mind.

The world is a big place, yet the whole world

fits into the state of mango honey mind.

That is, you can see the whole world from the state of mango honey mind:

Very large things in the world seem small in perspective.

Problems, for example:

What people perceive as big problems are actually quite small

when you visit mango honey mind.

Many problems, as we know them, disappear altogether!

Already mentioned:

The differences between people disappear quickly in mango honey mind.

But this is not to say one can’t tell an apple from a lime.

You know, rather, they are both fruit.

So it is with people:

You see people as people yet not as tastier people, or sweet or sour people.

Which is not to say that people won’t be sweet and sour.

They are.

But like fruits people can be sour before they become sweet.

This is the way it is and you know this within the state of mango honey mind.

Knowing this, you can bide your time with people:

The longer you observe them the more certain you are

to catch them at the moment they are their sweetest.

Then they are ripe fruit and they are likely to taste good.

This is not to say we should eat people

when they are sweet, or ripe.

It is to say, you can absorb people when they are ripe, or sweet.

You take them in while they are still themselves, and even though

they become a part of who you are once you’ve ingested their sweetness

they are forever who they are as well.

This is not to say that people are forever who they are.

Sadly, some people try to become someone else,

someone whom they are not.

But these people won’t be sweet to ingest because

we all must be ourselves in order to become ripe.

We cannot become sweet otherwise.

We must be our selves in order to ripen.

When in the state of mango honey mind we have a knack for

detecting those fruit which are bitter and those that are sweet.

After all, mango honey is sweet and sweetness flows like honey

and sticks to things, like mangos and people.

Think about this now:

Mango honey flows and it is not a solid that looks like a hammer.

It is a form of sweetness that is fluid and spreads around. It moves.

This means that you can float on a sea of mango honey

when you find one.

In this way you can spread sweetness

like the fluid sweetness it is wherever you go.

You can travel on a sea of mango honey. 

If you do this chances are very great you will arrive at the state of mango honey mind.

It is a fluid state of mind. 

 

In Mango Honey is here ... 

Equating love with positive thinking is erroneous …

It is one thing to have positive reactions about a thing or person and quite another reality to love that thing or person.

Positive thoughts about ice cream or chocolate, or chocolate ice cream, do not equate to love of that.

The world would be so simple and overflowing with love if it were true that positive thinking equates to love, or love to positive thinking.

For some, a default assumption equates acknowledging negative realities in conversation or writing as evidence that the reporter is negative-minded, a person for whom a glass is “always half empty” or even one of those urban-mythical creatures called “a hater.”

It follows that those who acknowledge negative realities in this world such as hunger, political or economic corruption, or hidden agendas to further nefarious quests for unlimited power do not deserve to be labeled “haters.”  If so, all priests who hear confessions would be “haters.”

 

Love embraces suffering.

Love embraces those who mourn, including those who mourn the loss of freedom for themselves or others.

 

Love embraces the weak and the powerless.

Love embraces those who are disadvantaged in this world.

Love embraces those who live day by day without love in their lives.

Love embraces those in pain, especially those in self-inflicted pain. 

Love seeks to comfort all who endure negative circumstances in life in ways unattainable through “positive thinking.”

There is a consequence of equating love with positive thinking that allows for indifference towards all negative circumstances. A door opens through which one tries to “shoo away” all negative realities as if they don’t matter, or as if negatives exist only as a result of one’s thinking.

This simplistic view, that positive thinking equates to love and thinking about negatives equates to being “a hater”  invites those who hold that view to ignore suffering in this world, suffering by other human beings and by extension, all other forms of life.

Had I not become acquainted with proponents of this belief it would be impossible for me to comprehend its implications: those who shut their minds and hearts to real circumstances of suffering in this world escape through inhumanity…

“Indifference is the essence of inhumanity". George Bernard Shaw

 

Being an exclusively or habitually “positive thinker” does not make one a lover. However, it can easily lead one into a trap of becoming indifferent to the dynamics of this world and the lives of others. I am reminded of a scene in a documentary about fresh water, its present and future availability. Somewhere in Africa, a community had no water except a privatized tap that required payment to access. A busload of United Nations representatives visited the facility, proud of the dubious achievement of “providing water” to the villagers. The people of the village had little or no access to money, so they could not use the tap. A concerned realist pleaded with the United Nations agent to see that the monetized tap was preventing access to water rather than providing it. The UN representative was insulted that the villagers were not grateful for the crude pipe and coin-operated tap, calling the pleading villagers and human rights advocates “rude” for voicing their complaints.

 

Adherence to a belief that “love is positive thinking, positive thinking is love” is to reduce love and indifference to a light switch. When the switch is "on" one is full of love as positive thinking. Those who are not “on” are simply negative people, or “haters.”  For the villagers above, this is a devastating philosophy.

 

My basic premise for this blog series is that we need a new paradigm or definition of a healthy society, based on how well the least among us are faring rather than the current one based on metrics of economic life.

·         If a city has homeless or hungry persons, it is not successful…

·         If a county has residents with untreated illnesses, it is not healthy…

·         If a school district does not educate (nearly) all its students to read and balance personal accounts, it is failing…

·         If more than a small percentage of children in a region have no father in their lives as a positive influence, then its social structure is in a process of self-destruction...

·         If more than a very small number of residents are taking mood-altering prescriptions, that society is detrimental, and a dismal failure.

 

All these negative conditions, and many more, have in common an inadequate infusion of love – a love that embraces those who suffer avoidable conditions along with actions committed to alleviate suffering’s causes.

 

The following report shows that economic metrics such as wealth within a community will not determine quality of life within that community. Miami is the “wealthiest” city in America, yet sadly ranks last in this 24/7 Wall St. report: Best and Worst Run Cities in America 

 

It is no coincidence that Miami has a long-standing reputation for rudeness among its residents and visitors, despite a dependence upon tourism as a major segment of its economic life. Being positive-minded about material asset accumulation has left a dearth of love there.

 

It’s all about love. 

 

This is the basic intent of these pages, to extend an embrace of love to those who understand or who are negatively affected by circumstances written about by this humble scribe.

 

It’s about love as a comforting embrace for all readers, because we’re all participating in this journey together. An example: that NDAA “indefinite detention law” and it’s inevitable use; people will suffer who should not. Indifference under the guise of “positive thinking” about the NDAA will say, “only terrorists will get what they deserve, and I love my country enough to support this.” Nevertheless, real love for humanity asserts that indefinite detention or death without trial should not happen to anyone.

 

In a similar way, Indifference will put a positive spin on our present corporate system that produces joblessness, homelessness, chemical illnesses, drug addictions and scattered starvation because a stock index goes up in value or another metric goes down. Love embraces the afflicted and a need for systemic change.  

Historical perspective of election 2012

Historical perspective of election 2012

As a rule and after writing about Placebo Politics and (resultant) Empty Elections (2008, current under revision) I am reticent to write about the political process under way.

Nevertheless, from the point of view of cultural anthropology, the influence of politics on the rights and freedoms of all of us cannot be entirely ignored. We all have opinions and are herded into choosing one side or another regarding artificial, meaningless debates over petty placebo issues in the political arena. People also enjoy watching races without betting on an outcome.

Ron Paul may be rightfully considered the Senator George McGovern of this year. In 1972, to advocate for an end to war was considered a radical “liberal” idea. Today, it is the conservative standard of a long-term Republican “Constitutional Conservative” candidate who opposes a war-mongering power-hungry ultra-liberal claimant to personal and political supremacy.

With this in mind, I pass along a piece of unknown origin that is self-explanatory:

 Obituary-Very Interesting ...........

In 1887 Alexander Tyler, a Scottish history professor at the University of Edinburgh,
had this to say about the fall of the Athenian Republic some 2,000 years prior:

"A democracy is always temporary in nature; it simply cannot exist as a permanent form of government.

A democracy will continue to exist up until the time that voters discover that they can vote themselves generous gifts from the public treasury.

From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates who promise the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that every democracy will finally collapse over loose fiscal policy, (which is) always followed by a dictatorship."

"The average age of the world's greatest civilizations from the beginning of history,
has been about 200 years. During those 200 years, these nations always progressed through the following sequence:

From bondage to spiritual faith; From spiritual faith to great courage; From courage to liberty;
From liberty to abundance; From abundance to complacency; From complacency to apathy;
From apathy to dependence; From dependence back into bondage."

The Obituary follows:
Born 1776, Died 2008; it doesn't hurt to read this several times.

Professor Joseph Olson of Hamline University School of Law in St. Paul, Minnesota, points out some interesting facts concerning the last Presidential election:

Number of States won by:  Obama: 19    McCain: 29

Square miles of land won by:  Obama: 580,000  McCain: 2,427,000

Population of counties won by:  Obama: 127 million  McCain: 143 million

Murder rate per 100,000 residents in counties won by:  Obama: 13.2   McCain: 2.1

Professor Olson adds: "In aggregate, the map of the territory McCain won was mostly the land owned by the taxpaying citizens of the country.

Obama territory mostly encompassed those citizens living in low income tenements
and living off various forms of government welfare..."

Olson believes the United States is now somewhere between the "complacency and apathy" phase of Professor Tyler's definition of democracy, with some forty percent of the nation's population already having reached the "governmental dependency" phase.

If Congress grants amnesty and citizenship to twenty million criminal invaders called “Illegal's” - and they vote - then we can say goodbye to the USA in fewer than five years.

If you are in favor of this, then by all means, delete this message.

If you are not, then pass this along to help everyone realize just how much is at stake, knowing that apathy is the greatest danger to our freedom.

This is truly scary!

Of course we are not a democracy; we form a Constitutional Republic.

Someone should point this out to Obama.
Of course we know he and too many others pay little attention to The Constitution.

There couldn't be more at stake than on Nov 2012.
If you are as concerned as I am please pass this along.

^ ^ ^

As A Man Thinketh - Chapter Five: The Thought-Factor in Achievement

As readers of this blog series may know, some of the issues on these pages deal with states of mind and encroachments on our freedoms…   whether those freedoms be of expressions of belief, of fathers’ rights, of states’ rights, of children’s rights, or of a right self-determination in the economic sense.

Some time ago, a man named James Allen (as far as I know not related to James Allen running for congress in North Carolina in 2012) wrote a small book that has far exceeded its expected contribution to society since the time of its publication a century ago. I believe the following chapter is pertinent to today in so many ways!

As A Man Thinketh

by James Allen

[Brought to you by CornerstoneBooks  -- www.CornerstoneBooks.net] 

Foreword

This little volume (the result of meditation and experience) is not intended as an exhaustive treatise on the much-written upon subject of the power of thought. It is suggestive rather than explanatory, its object being to stimulate men and women to the discovery and perception of the truth that -

"They themselves are makers of themselves"

by virtue of the thoughts which they choose and encourage; that mind is the master weaver, both of the inner garment of character and the outer garment of circumstance, and that, as they may have hitherto woven in ignorance and pain they may now weave in enlightenment and happiness.

Chapter Five:  The Thought-Factor in Achievement

All that a man achieves and all that he fails to achieve is the direct result of his own thoughts. In a justly ordered universe, where loss of equipoise would mean total destruction, individual responsibility must be absolute. A man's weakness and strength, purity and impurity, are his own, and not another man's. They are brought about by himself, and not by another; and they can only be altered by himself, never by another. His condition is also his own, and not another man's. His suffering and his happiness are evolved from within. As he thinks, so he is; as he continues to think, so he remains.

A strong man cannot help a weaker unless the weaker is willing to be helped, and even then the weak man must become strong of himself. He must, by his own efforts, develop the strength which he admires in another. None but himself can alter his condition.

It has been usual for men to think and to say, "Many men are slaves because one is an oppressor; let us hate the oppressor." Now, however, there is among an increasing few a tendency to reverse this judgment, and to say, "One man is an oppressor because many are slaves; let us despise the slaves." The truth is that oppressor and slave are cooperators in ignorance, and, while seeming to afflict each other, are in reality afflicting themselves. A perfect Knowledge perceives the action of law in the weakness of the oppressed and the misapplied power of the oppressor. A perfect Love, seeing the suffering which both states entail, condemns neither. A perfect Compassion embraces both oppressor and oppressed.

He who has conquered weakness, and has put away all selfish thoughts, belongs neither to oppressor nor oppressed. He is free.

A man can only rise, conquer, and achieve by lifting up his thoughts. He can only remain weak, and abject, and miserable by refusing to lift up his thoughts.

Before a man can achieve anything, even in worldly things, he must lift his thoughts above slavish animal indulgence. He may not, in order to succeed, give up all animality and selfishness, by any means; but a portion of it must, at least, be sacrificed. A man whose first thought is bestial indulgence could neither think clearly nor plan methodically. He could not find and develop his latent resources, and would fail in any undertaking. Not having commenced manfully to control his thoughts, he is not in a position to control affairs and to adopt serious responsibilities. He is not fit to act independently and stand alone, but he is limited only by the thoughts which he chooses.

There can be no progress, no achievement without sacrifice. A man's worldly success will be in the measure that he sacrifices his confused animal thoughts, and fixes his mind on the development of his plans, and the strengthening of his resolution and self-reliance. And the higher he lifts his thoughts, the more manly, upright, and righteous he becomes, the greater will be his success, the more blessed an enduring will be his achievements.

The universe does not favor the greedy, the dishonest, the vicious, although on the mere surface it may sometimes appear to do so; it helps the honest, the magnanimous, the virtuous. All the great Teachers of the ages have declared this in varying forms, and to prove and know it a man has but to persist in making himself more and more virtuous by lifting up his thoughts.

Intellectual achievements are the result of thought consecrated to the search for knowledge, or for the beautiful and true in life and nature. Such achievements may be sometimes connected with vanity and ambition but they are not the outcome of those characteristics. They are the natural outgrowth of long an arduous effort, and of pure and unselfish thoughts.

Spiritual achievements are the consummation of holy aspirations. He who lives constantly in the conception of noble and lofty thoughts, who dwells upon all that is pure and unselfish, will, as surely as the sun reaches its zenith and the moon its full, become wise and noble in character, and rise into a position of influence and blessedness.

Achievement, of whatever kind, is the crown of effort, the diadem of thought. By the aid of self-control, resolution, purity, righteousness, and well-directed thought a man ascends. By the aid of animality, indolence, impurity, corruption, and confusion of thought a man descends.

A man may rise to high success in the world, and even to lofty altitudes in the spiritual realm, and again descend into weakness and wretchedness by allowing arrogant, selfish, and corrupt thoughts to take possession of him.

Victories attained by right thought can only be maintained by watchfulness. Many give way when success is assured, and rapidly fall back into failure.

All achievements, whether in the business, intellectual, or spiritual world, are the result of definitely directed thought, are governed by the same law and are of the same method; the only difference lies in the object of attainment.

He who would accomplish little must sacrifice little. He who would achieve much must sacrifice much. He who would attain highly must sacrifice greatly.

A few reflective thoughts . . . on children and their future.

The abduction of my son to Israel set me on a new path in life. This event caused me to plunge into a dark world of international child abduction as a global epidemic.

Along with abduction, because this is a form of emotional abuse, came an overwhelming exposure to other forms of child abuse, many of which are not widely known. In addition to pursuing the return of my son through legal means, such as The Hague Convention of the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction, I researched related topics, eventually compiling more than one hundred problem issues that a typical teen between ages 12 and 17 will deal with.

These issues or dire circumstances became a foreground in my mind, while behind the plight of children a definitive background was forming: the political continuity of a war against families, fathers and children.

Piece by piece, evidence of an exceedingly well-organized campaign to destroy traditional families emerged.

The idea that political, economic and social “progress” has inadvertently brought about the wholesale negative impact on families, fathers and children is a myopic, well-sold deception. To believe that humanism applied to social progress has improved lives of children in our present time is as ridiculous as believing that a team of hikers accidentally climbs to the peak of a high mountain by going for a stroll. Both achievements come as a result of careful planning and meticulous execution of a plan. One has been exceedingly negative in its impact on lives of children.

Just as tens of millions of American, Canadian, Aussies and Brits, and other families struggle to earn a living in today’s system that allows little time for gathering information about global movements, so too does the typical family struggling with destructive forces have little time to gain this understanding: there is a direct connection between those who have destroyed families by setting policies and laws into force and those who have destroyed home-ownership, hundreds of small and medium banks, giant financial corporations, savings accounts, house values, and national economies.

At the core of these “progressive changes” are people who enact laws, through surrogates in elected and appointed government offices, to carry out their openly proclaimed agendas. There is nothing new in this assertion, as it is the conclusion of very many persons who have taken the time to honestly investigate social, political and economic trends and history.

For many, especially those who refuse to study abundant evidence, this and many other truths are dismissed under the general category of “conspiracy theory.”  Refusal to examine evidence that is within every public school, reflected in the behavior and ideas of the world’s youth, and seen everywhere in the social-economic context of our lives is part fear and part “normalcy bias.”

“What is seen cannot be unseen,” hence I cannot ignore the implications of evidence accrued since the abduction of my son into Israel. It has forever changed the direction and expectations of my life.

My personal struggle to have my son returned from Israel has led to prolonged joblessness (I was terminated from a nine-year job while preparing travel to Israel to follow through with legal actions) converted to impoverishing self-employment. I’ve paid a very high price to gain substantial knowledge, not limited to my son’s captivity in Israel, but also details of hundreds of other cases of abducted children and destroyed families.

Recently it has been said of me that I am an aloof, pretentious, phony, faux-intellectual without a single original idea, essentially a monumental faker. I believe that fear and normalcy bias are reasons behind ad hominem accusations made against me and other critics of our social-political-monetary integrated system. Fear because of overwhelming evidence that supports negative conclusions regarding the future of the United States as a haven for freedom and “democracy” second to none in the world. Influenced by a normalcy bias that says, essentially, the future will be as good or better than the past “glories” and achievements attained by a free society like no other before in history, those of us who write painful truths must be dismissed as pessimistic, depressed “naysayers.”  

Contrary to the belief of those who would dismiss me as a “pretender,”  there is nothing for me to pretend. I know that my message is unwelcome to many. I know that my conclusions are going to be dismissed or ridiculed by many, and I see no reason to pretend that to have “credentials” to display on a wall to imply a superior education. Rather than finish college studies, I dropped out numerous times. I chose not to be lettered or pretentious, knowing that this has nothing to do with real education.

Formal education remains an obstacle to attaining significant, comprehensive understanding of critical maneuvers of corporations and governments that curtail lives of families and individuals. 

Nor do I “pretend” to be an ordinary man (as one critic says) because I am an ordinary man. Nor can one pretend to be exceptional, as I am merely one among billions whose world has changed while living, loving and working through these past few decades. Those changes have not been conducive to confidence and fulfillment for our children's future.

Earlier in life I was known for my motto, “We are all the same.”  Still, I hold this truth to be self-evident, although many will find it imponderable.  

     

A Poem: "The City"

I come from a southern city

Of steamy sunlight,

Women in jeans too tight

Always ready for a quick line

And a hard stare from men

Who’ve mastered macho though little more.

I come from a place for men,

A place for women

To mass-market bodies made firm

For the purpose despite dangers

Of selling disease along with their desperation:

The fear of going unnoticed tends to conflict

With welling fears of diminishing expectations,

Making prey seem more attractive

While the fear of being unique

Or different overwhelms a quest for individuality.

                Robotic insecurity

                Cosmetic necessity

                Automatic insincerity

                Homogenic perpetuity

The fear of being alone in the unfathomable marketplace

Collectively called the human race.

I come from a southern city where it’s a way of life

To push one’s way through lines in stores,

And strife without compassion or pity

Drives many on these shores

To travel with a forty-five

Behind tinted-glass doors

Seeking conspicuous anonymity.

It may be sunspots; it could be the moon

Or the heat and humidity forming thunderstorms

Each afternoon; the lack of trees,

Thick air without cooling breeze,

Whatever the cause it’s madness all the same.

You’ve got to be strong to evade that game

Of marketing yourself through rules

Learned exclusively from the tube.

You’ve got to be strong if you hope to break away

From those shallow trenches in which insight-less

People stay lifetimes, lived exclusively in tune

With visions from the tube.

Be warned it’s not easy

Going it alone without shared

Experiential knowledge of queasy

Reactions to having one’s mind pared 

While the ability to think is being devoured

By tens of millions of audiovisual machines

Stared into hour after hour.

Define this friendly hostile town

Turn international city

Somewhat between culturally sterile

And hyperbalically churning intensity,

Both bay-water still yet churning

With multicultural complexity.

City of the sun so sensuous,

Its people possessed of myriad desires

While their lifelines grow continually more tenuous.

Its race-paced lifestyle ever inspires

Increasing consumption of resources – so strenuous

To the complex ecosystem survival requires.

In this southern city of the sun

With steamy atmospheric magic

Men and women naked without a gun

Become a paradigm of tragic trends

Wrought with tell-a-vision clarity:

Power fused, sans logic, with machismo,

Perverse passion reverts to hatred

As chaotic ethnicity explodes delusions

Of multicultural harmonic tranquility.  

 [Written in 1991, published in "A Voice in the Void" 2002]

It still seems relevant today. Perhaps more than ever?